The Alcobaça Monastery or Alcobasa Monastery (, Mosteiro de Santa Maria de Alcobaça) is a Catholic monastic complex located in the town of Alcobaça (or Alcobasa, ), in central Portugal, some 120 km north of Lisbon. The monastery was established in 1153 by the first Portuguese king, Afonso Henriques, and would develop a close association with the Portuguese monarchy throughout its seven-century-long history. The church and monastery were the first Gothic buildings in Portugal, and, together with the roughly older Augustinian Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, it was one of the most important mediaeval monasteries in Portugal. Due to its artistic, cultural and historical relevance, it was included in UNESCO's World Heritage Site list in 1989. History The Alcobasa Monastery is one of the first buildings associated with the Cistercian Order in Portugal. It was founded in 1153 as a gift from the first Portuguese king, Afonso I or Afonso Henriques (1112–1185) to Bernard of Clairvaux, following the king's conquest of the city of Santarém from the Moors in March 1147. The foundation of the monastery was part of a larger strategy by King Afonso I to assert his authority and promote the colonisation of lands recently conquered from the Moors during the "Reconquista Cristã" or Reconquista. Construction began in 1178, some 25 years after the first Cistercian monks settled in the Alcobaça region. Initially, the monks lived in wooden houses, and would only move to the newly built monastery in 1223. The church proper wasn't completed until 1252. Church and adjacent monastery are the earliest examples of truly Gothic architecture in Portugal, and the church itself was the largest in Portugal at the time of its completion. The final touch in this large mediaeval ensemble was given in the late 13th century, when King Denis I (1261–1325) ordered the construction of the Gothic cloister, also known as the Cloister of Silence. The monks dedicated their lives to religious meditation, creating illuminated manuscripts in a scriptorium. The monks from the monastery produced an early authoritative history on Portugal in a series of books. The library at Alcobasa was one of the largest Portuguese mediaeval libraries, but was pillaged by the invading French in 1810, and many items were stolen in an anti-clerical riot in 1834, when the religious orders in Portugal were dissolved. The remnants of the monastery library, including hundreds of mediaeval manuscripts, are kept today in the